Erika D: Smith: Yoga could be new-age remedy to age-old problem of violence in Indy

Oct. 29, 2013

Students in IPS School 19 participate in a yoga class. / Erika D. Smith/The Star

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The sun had just risen when a class of first- and second-graders quietly filed into a classroom at School 19 on the Near Eastside. They dutifully grabbed their yoga mats, took off their shoes to reveal mismatched socks and collapsed into a “pretzel” pose.

“Remember, it’s meant to be uncomfortable,” yoga instructor Alicia Oskay said in a lilting voice. “You have to breathe through it.”

This is how Oskay begins her yoga class twice a week at the Indianapolis Public School. And every week, the elementary kids — kids from families who, by and large, could not afford private yoga lessons — are catching on.

This is the mission of Mighty Lotus, a small but growing organization that wants to expose “underserved communities” to yoga. For now, that means students at School 19. In the future, it will include teenagers at other IPS schools, people with disabilities and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re just trying to build something and it’s just slow going,” said Alyssa Pfennig, a founding board member and yoga instructor. “We’ve been asked to go into other schools. What’s stopping us is capacity and money.”

Why yoga?

Anyone who has taken even a few classes knows that yoga is as much of a mental exercise as it is an emotional one. Devoted practitioners say yoga instills the discipline of “mindfulness.” What they really mean – in non-granola terms -- is it teaches you how to put your mind in charge of your body. It teaches you to focus on what you choose and to ignore the rest.

Bend yourself in enough painful poses week after week and learn how to “breathe through” them without falling over, and suddenly you’ll realize that the skills of yoga are really the skills of life. Mature, productive adults know how to deal with pain and stress without reacting to it in unproductive ways.

This is exactly what so many teenagers and young men in the urban core of Indianapolis don’t know how to do – and with disastrous consequences.

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Why did so many young people decide to pick up a gun and shoot someone else this year? Just ask Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite or the Rev. Charles Harrison, who is constantly doing outreach for the Ten Point Coalition. They’ll tell you it’s almost always the same story.

And then someone is shot, maybe killed. And someone else goes to jail.

Vendettas are forged and hardened. Then the whole idiotic process repeats itself.

What is driving this sequence of events other than a lack of impulse control and an inability to manage anger? What is this other than not having the tools to cope with pain, stress and conflict in less reactive and violent ways?

Sounds crazy, but what if teaching yoga in the schools of these urban neighborhoods could help? What if you start early, as Mighty Lotus is doing, so that by the time kids get to high school, they won’t be so reactive and destructive? It has worked in cities in California and Maryland.

Oskay says she already makes such connections in her classes at School 19.

“I say: `You know how you get mad and you don’t breathe? Yoga helps you breathe.’ ”

Oskay and Pfennig call this “planting the seed” now so these kids can better cope with life later. The students, meanwhile, have been very receptive.

That’s not entirely surprising, though, because health and fitness are already a big part of the curriculum at School 19. Every morning before classes start, students get a chance to jump around and be active. While I watched a dozen kids do yoga, dozens more were careening around the hallways on scooters, bumper-car style.

It’s uncertain whether administrators and students — especially teenagers — at other IPS schools will be as receptive.

I sincerely hope they will be. Because as a community, there’s only so much we can do mitigate the pain and stress in the lives of children and teenagers in the urban core. We can’t snap our fingers to turn bad parents into good ones. We can’t make sure every kid hears more praise than scorn. We can’t even ensure that every child has enough to eat or that every child lives in a safe neighborhood.

There’s only so much teachers can do. There’s only so much the police can do. There’s only so much the faith community can do.

We can’t fix every child’s life. But maybe what we can do is work harder to give children the tools they need to deal with their lives.

“We’d really like to have this presence in the community,” Pfenning said. “We want to give people other tools to handle their issues and their environment.”